In partnership with the County of Kauai, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center (CSC) and Pacific Services Center (PSC) created the Kauai Online Hazard Assessment Tool (KOHA) to support the County of Kauai's natural hazard related planning, permitting, and outreach activities. KOHA is an intranet based geographic information system (GIS) tool for identifying the hazard risks for any user defined location on Kauai. Although designed to address all hazards, the initial focus of KOHA is coastal and riverine flooding.
The County of Kauai is dedicated to mitigating the effects of all natural hazards. The county's Department of Public Works is responsible for reviewing building permits to minimize public and private losses from flooding. The Department utilizes the recently released Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps (DFIRMs) published in September of 2005 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for determining if proposed building sites are within flood prone areas. Subsequently, the Division of Engineering within the Department is responsible for reviewing building permits and requires property owners to build structures in accordance with the County of Kauai Floodplain Management Ordinance (No. 630/696).
The current version of KOHA is availabe from any desktop computer at the County of Kauai with an internet browser. By going to the KOHA web page county staff can rapidly and accurately identify the FEMA designated flood zone(s) for any parcel or proposed building site within the county. KOHA will also determine if the parcel or proposed building site intersects the Special Management Area (SMA) and the Tsunami Evacuation Zone. Once these three flood hazard risks have been determined, KOHA generates a report containing the specific risk information along with a detailed map including a satellite image of the area.
The information provided by KOHA is not meant to replace or be used without expert interpretation. Rather, KOHA is intended to save time by improving access to and retrieval of hazard related information that is needed to support decision making.